By Andrew Warshaw
November 24 – FIFA vice-president Jack Warner has renewed his attack on the forthcoming BBC Panorama investigation into World Cup bidding, warning the broadcast will have “negative fall-out” for England’s World Cup bid.
Panorama is planning to screen the programme on Monday, three days before the 2018 and 2022 vote in Zurich, and has written to Warner as well as FIFA President Sepp Blatter asking for responses to a number of allegations.
On Monday (November 22), Warner said he believed the programme was a personal vendetta and that he was not worried about the contents of the investigation.
Warner’s vote is critical to England’s chances of success, but in an interview with Trinidad newspaper Newsday he said the Panorama broadcast did not bode well.
Asked whether it could negatively affect the vote for England, he said: “I believe it might.
“I don’t know really how much it would do that but I would imagine there must be some negative fallout – how much I really don’t know.”
England’s bid team have already lambasted the forthcoming screening, accusing those responsible as being “unpatriotic” as fears grow that the technically excellent England bid will be scuppered by political and personal agendas.
“I haven’t yet made up my mind how I’m voting,” said Warner, one of the three CONCACAF FIFA members.
“I don’t want to dignify the foolishness by the BBC and what they want to show.”
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